I Alone
by spikespetslayer
Summary: Penny is fascinated by Sheldon's hands... Shenny if you squint. Now new and improved with a part 2 for all those that so sweetly asked-I made an exception to my rule about leaving a story alone. Please, enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

Penny was bored. Bored, bored, _bored_. She sat in "her spot" in 4A, thumbing through a magazine as her friends she affectionately called the 'nerd herd' cataloged and categorized their comic books. She didn't really know why she was there; it was hot, she didn't want to stay in her apartment alone, and she was feeling terminally _bored_.

She idly flipped another page, pretending to look down at the glossy page as she studied her friends from under her lashes. Raj sat with his back to her, pretending that she wasn't present as he read one of his Batman comic books. The small sips of the beer that he'd been nursing for the last hour kept him able to speak in front of her; she guessed (rightly, had she asked) that even the knowledge that she was in the room was enough to activate the selective mutism that affected him. She found herself wishing that he could overcome his handicap—they would be besties for certain, she was sure of it. Same tastes in music, books, movies, but thank God there wasn't a spark. She had found that out, unfortunately. Waking up in bed with someone was usually a surefire way of discovering that fact.

Howard, thank God, was taken. That had been some inspired matchmaking on her part. It seemed that Bernadette was as freaky as the little engineer was, after hearing about some of their exploits one night when Bernadette was three sheets to the wind. He looked over the top of the sexually explicit manga he was reading and caught her eye, giving her a wink as he wiggled his finger at the large-breasted cartoon festooning the back cover. Penny wrinkled her nose and let her eyes drift over to his right where Leonard sat.

Leonard. She had really tried there. Best she could, at least. He wasn't the kind of guy that she usually went for and it showed. Whiny, insecure, submissive—he was the epitome of the anti-boyfriend, if there was such a word. She would have to ask Sheldon sometime whether it was or not. He would know.

Still, Leonard treated her decently. Well, okay. They never went many places together, which never bothered her much until she saw him out with Stephanie, then Priya. He took them to fancy restaurants and clubs; if she hadn't run into them more than once, she would have never known. It made her wonder-what was wrong with her? Was he embarrassed to be seen with her? She always felt like a trophy girlfriend when she was with him. It wasn't a new sensation for her, but it bothered her that he felt that way about her.

Water under the bridge, she thought. Never to be repeated. Never. She had to be firm with herself on that nugget of truth. Her relationship with Leonard was a ship that sailed, sunk, and that was the end of it.

She shifted her eyes to her left and looked out of the corner of her eye toward Sheldon. Dr. Crazypants himself. He was thumbing through a flash comic with pristine white gloves in place, turning each page as carefully as if it was made of tissue. The muscles in his forearm flexed and she found herself captivated by the sight of the tendons bunching and relaxing as the action in the comic reached its climax. He barely breathed as his eyes flew across the page, nostrils flaring with each breath.

She dropped her eyes to his hands. Even though he had gloves on, she could almost imagine his long fingers in the white fabric. When she was in high school, someone told her that you could just about judge the size of a man's penis by the size of his hands and feet. Since then, she had discovered that it wasn't necessarily true; however, it crossed her mind more than once when she watched Sheldon doing something with his hands.

It must have been the heat, or the fact that she hadn't had sex in a few months, or her boredom talking, but she started wondering what those incredible fingers on those talented hands could do to her.

He chose that moment to slip the comic back into the protective sleeve, and then pulled the gloves of one finger at a time, his eyes still trained on the cover of the book and never noticing her as she watched him openly, her tongue moistening her lips as he pulled off first one glove, then the other. His lithe fingers shuffled through the box on the coffee table for a moment as he replaced the book, and then pulled out the next one in the series.

He was just as serious as he pulled each glove back on, wriggling his fingers into the soft cotton first then pulling them snug against his fingertips, one by one. He ran the fingers of the other hand down each one from tip to base, and then grabbed the cuff of the glove to tighten it against his hand. To finish his preparations, he interlaced his fingers and pushed them against one another, then pushed his hands in front of him, bowing his digits to stretch them out fully and prevent hand cramps prior to grasping the comic sleeve reverently, drawing the book away from the cardboard backing inside and into his lap.

Penny found she was breathing quite shallow and leaning ever so slightly toward the physicist as he made to open his book. She felt a throb deep in her gut and let out a tiny gasp. He must have heard her because he chose to turn toward her, concern furrowing his brow.

"Penny, are you feeling well? You seem short of breath—do you need to utilize an inhaler? I'm sure that Leonard has an unopened one in the bathroom."

She started, then jumped up off the couch. "I'm—I'm fine. I need to, uh, use the restroom."

Four pairs of eyes watched her as she rounded the coffee table and made her way down the hall. Howard fell over as he continued to watch until the door closed solidly behind her. "What the frak was that all about?" he asked, but nobody was paying him any attention so he received no answer.

Penny leaned against the bathroom door for a moment, and then crossed to look at herself in the mirror, her toes behind Sheldon's tapeline on the floor. She looked okay—well, no, she didn't. Her pupils were blown, leaving a thin green ring around the black centers, and her chest was flushed as she tried to slow her breathing down.

Holy shit, she was attracted to Sheldon!

She wasn't about to make the same mistake with him as she had Raj. It had nearly imploded their friendships—hers, Leonard's, Raj's—and that wasn't something she was proud of in the least. Not to mention, she didn't think that she could stand Leonard's whining again. _Why him and not me?_ Really, was that something that he really, really wanted to know? She doubted it.

Well, since she was in here, she might as well pee.

She pulled her shorts down and sat, waiting for relief that just wasn't happening. She was too turned on to void her bladder, just from watching Sheldon's hands caressing that fricking book. Might as well give up for now, she thought.

Her breath caught in her throat when she reached for the toilet paper and her arm brushed across her own nipple. Fuck, turned on didn't even cover it. She had needs, damn it, and….

She knew that it was a bad idea when she did it, but she did it anyway. She brushed her hand deliberately over her breast, lingering on the erect nub that strained the fabric of her shirt. An electric shock ran through her body, from her nipple to her pulsating clit. She could feel her body's lubrication as she toyed with her breasts, still sitting on the toilet.

No, she couldn't do that there. That was just gross. She stood, leaving her shorts on the floor in front of the stool and leaned against the sink, facing the door.

She reached down with her right hand and touched herself. Oh my God, she was so wet—it had flowed out onto the inside of her thighs.

She leaned, she toyed, and she fantasized.

"_You know, Sheldon, sometimes a girl wants a little attention. Like you give your comic books, you know? All the care and consideration you take to keep them perfect." Her voice grew louder in frustration as he seemingly ignored her. He continued to sort and identify comic books, each series into their individual boxes, ignoring her need._

_When the last comic book was put away, he stripped off the gloves again, much as he had done when she was sitting at his side. His eyes were bluer than she had ever seen them before as he got up out of his spot and stalked over to her. _

_He leaned closer to her, forcing her back against the kitchen island. His long arms propped him up, keeping him from touching her body with his as he trapped her there, holding her in place with no more than his gaze. "What kind of attention do you need, Penny?"_

_In her fantasy, she was completely naked. In addition, embarrassed. Her overactive hormones had worked double-time today and if she moved off the kitchen stool there would be a huge wet spot where she'd been sitting. "Um, Sheldon, that's not what I meant," she stammered._

_He looked at her smugly, making her hackles rise. "It seems that you have been unclear in your assertions, then. You say that you need attention; however, when offered such attention, you decline to make your needs known. Am I to read your mind telepathically to ascertain your needs?"_

"_Thought that was hokum, Moonpie."_

"_It is. However, if I read your body's signals correctly, then I must deduce that you are sexually aroused, if only from the outward symptoms. Are you experiencing any localized throbbing or edema?"_

"_Maybe you should touch me and find out, Sheldon."_

_He reached out his large hand and cupped her right breast, his thumb tracing around the areola without coming close to her nipple. "I believe that this is somewhat edematous. It appears larger than it did the night I assisted you from your shower mishap."_

"_Uh, I…" Penny could barely speak; her total focus was riveted on the sensation that he was eliciting with the brush of his fingertips._

_He ghosted his fingertips down her side. "I do not perceive any swelling here." One hand cupped her buttock, drawing her partially off the chair and tilting her pelvis forward. "Nor here," he added._

"_Sheldon, I…"_

"_You seem to be having difficulty speaking, Penny. Is there something wrong?"_

"_No, no. I'm just…"_

"_Speechless? Yes, I would imagine. You have never seen me as a sexual human being; therefore, you cannot imagine me as one now. I assure you, Penny, I have the same desires and needs as any man. I choose to suppress them for the benefit of humankind. They are secondary to the person I choose to be."_

_He plucked at her erect nipple, rolling it between his fingertips. "I am the master of my own body, Penny. Soon, I will become the master of yours as well."_

Her hand dropped down and her fingers sluiced through her own juices, spreading them over her labia to ease the friction. She closed her eyes and imagined his hands, his fingers touching her and easing the ache inside her as he pushed first one, and then two fingers inside her. The fleshy part of her thumb brushed against her clitoris and she let out a breathy moan before biting her lip to silence herself.

The sink's edge was biting into her rear so she turned around and leaned on the sink with one arm, her hand caressing her nipples in turn as she plunged her fingers into her vagina. She grimaced at the over loud noises she was making between her breathing, her moans, and the squishing sounds that were coming from below. Maybe it was just the bathroom acoustics, or maybe she really was being that loud. At this point, she really didn't care.

She was so close already; it had only been a few minutes, she thought, but she realized that her motor had been idling on low all day, ever since she plopped down next to Sheldon on the couch. She felt the carefree abandon of her youth in that moment; once she had fingerfucked herself in the girls lavatory at school when a boy had looked at her a certain way. She had nearly bit her lip in two when she came, but that was part of the fun of it all. Well, that and Christy, the whore of Omaha, had dared her.

She dropped her head and rested it on her forearm, her breasts swaying as she frigged herself even harder. So close…

Suddenly, a familiar triple knock sounded on the door. "Penny. Penny. Penny, are you all right? I was walking by and I thought that I heard you make a sound. Do you need assistance?"

Trust Sheldon to knock at the wrong time. On the other hand, maybe the right one. Her orgasm was a lightning bolt that jolted her out of her flip-flops, frying her synapses with its intensity when she heard his voice repeating her name.

"Oh my God, Sheldon," she moaned.

She heard him jostling the doorknob, attempting to open the door. His voice was near panic when he called her name. "Penny, it seems the door has been locked. Are you in pain? Do you require an ambulance?"

She was about to answer him when a second orgasm rocked her body. "Sheldon!" she yelled before biting her lip, hoping to silence any further outbursts.

"I will come right in, Penny, just as soon as I obtain a screwdriver to manipulate the lock."

She panted against her arm for a moment, then slowed her breathing down purposely, long enough to speak. "No, I don't need help, Sheldon. I'm shocked that you're standing outside the bathroom door when there's a lady inside. Go!"

"Penny, are you certain you do not require my assistance? Your continued exclamations of my name are quite alarming."

"Shock, Sheldon. Nothing but shock. Now go away!"

She heard him leave, his footsteps going toward his room. He must be packing up his books for the night, she thought. Then dinner, then laundry….

As she withdrew her hand from deep inside herself, she brushed against her overly sensitive clitoris and came again, shocking her. She wondered if Sheldon could hear her from the bedroom next door; somehow, she hoped that he could. Her elbow hit the wall next to her and she moaned again, the tingling running up her arm and into her shoulder.

She straightened her clothes, flushed the toilet, checked her appearance in the mirror as she washed her hands thoroughly, and then went back into the living room.

Four pairs of eyes stared her down. "What?" she said, crossing in front of Sheldon to sit back down on the couch.

Raj leaned over to whisper to Howard. Howard looked at him with surprise, and then shrugged. "Yes, girls do it too, Raj. I never expected…"

"Do what?" Penny growled, her eyes narrowed.

"Make boom-boom," Raj said without thinking. He clapped his hands over his mouth in shock and just stared at Penny, his eyes wide with horrified surprise.

"Gross, Raj. Just gross." Penny crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her lap.

She didn't feel him move, but there he was at her shoulder. His breath tickled her ear as he leaned in to whisper to her. "I should tell you that your shorts are on inside-out. Just in case you wanted to correct it."

Her face flamed with embarrassment as she realized he was right. She leaped off the couch and hurried to the door. "I just realized I have things to do, guys. See you later!"

As she turned, her eyes landed on Sheldon. He was staring at her with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. She wasn't sure if he knew what she was doing in there, but he sure looked like the cat that ate the canary.

Suddenly she was looking forward to laundry night.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't do this. I don't bend to the public's wishes, I don't write sequels for one shots, I don't...but this time I did. So, for the uninformed or those wondering where to start, hit the back button or go to my profile and read "I Alone".

All General Disclaimers Apply. Thank you for your warm welcome and for reading. Enjoy this sequel!

~D

* * *

At exactly 8:05pm, he closed his computer lid, slid his chair back from his desk, and went to his room to pick up his laundry basket. It waited for him on the end of his bed, presorted into lights, darks, whites. Each piece was neatly folded and precisely placed in the basket. His flip-fold rested on top, not touching the dirty clothing but the laundry products on top of them. He still fluttered around for a moment like a moth caught in the light of a flame, looking for something else to add to the basket. There was nothing left in his hamper so he sighed, picked up the basket and left his safe haven, closing the door quietly behind him.

He sang the element song in his head as he walked down the four flights of stairs to the basement. The song ended when his foot hit the cement floor and he turned to the left toward the open door of the laundry room.

He could smell her perfume before he even reached the door. His hypersensitive nose was able to identify components of the scent—vanillin, cream, an underlying note of saffron (to his surprise), but there was something beneath it all that he could not put a name to. He added it to the mental filing cabinet that was labeled 'Penny' and 'mysteries' and 'things to investigate further' and promptly forgot it as only he could, turning his mind to his latest physics problem.

Because he had scented her out, as it were, she didn't surprise him when he saw her sitting on top of the washer farthest to the right. The one that he did not use because it did not adhere to the printed eleven minute wash cycle. When he was timing the machines, that one was exactly one minute forty-seven seconds off the wash cycle and fifty-five seconds off on the rinse cycle. His calculations indicated that it would not allow for the adequate permeation of the liquid softener to act upon his clothing and therefore he would not utilize a deficient machine.

He had never realized until this moment that Penny used this machine and left the optimal machines for his use. Curious. He noticed everything. Why had this escaped his nightly journaling of interpersonal occurrences?

With a mental shrug, he placed his flip-fold on the folding table, loaded each washing machine with its proper load, inserted the quarters from his right pants pocket, and turned to look at the blonde-haired woman on the washer to his right.

"Good evening, Penny. I presume that whatever was causing you to vocalize your pain has subsided for the evening?"

She looked up at him over the top of her magazine. A slow flush bloomed on her cheeks and moved down her neck to her chest, drawing his gaze. "Um, yeah, right. I'm not—well, I'm fine."

"I see." He folded his arms carefully and leaned against the washing machine that currently agitated his whites in the hottest water. "I must ask a question, however. When you entered our bathroom, you were wearing your red shorts. When you returned, they were inside out. Now you are wearing denim shorts. May I ask what happened in the bathroom to cause your shorts to turn themselves inside out?"

He noticed that her eyes widened comically, almost like a character in an anime video prior to an unseemly outburst. He braced himself for an outburst of that sort.

She swallowed heavily and could not meet his eyes. "I was—um, well, that is…it doesn't matter, Sheldon. Don't worry about it."

He drew himself in slightly, her words perturbing him for some reason. "I do not understand, Penny. I was not worried about it, per se. I was simply concerned that there was an anomaly occurring in my apartment that should be of interest to me."

"Oh." She pretended to look at her magazine again and he concentrated on physics until her machine predictably kicked into the spin cycle far earlier than she expected. He pretended not to notice how she arched her back and stretched, pressing her lower body into the vibrations of the machine beneath her—or the secretive smile that crossed her lips.

"Should I assume by your reticence in speaking about the incident that it was sexual in nature?"

Perhaps he should have waited until she was more balanced and less preoccupied because she fell face-first off the washing machine.

She never hit the ground. Well, her feet did. Her face didn't because Sheldon, with his lightning fast reflexes and superior calculations (and his fantasies of being the Flash, were he to tell the truth) turned and caught her, his arm wrapping around her under her breasts. At least, that was his intention. His right hand, instead of landing underneath her breast, landed directly on it, bent around it, cupped it. Sheldon Cooper copped a feel without intention.

As soon as he saw her feet firmly planted on the ground, he released her. His palm was on fire; he could still feel the puzzling sensation of firm and soft against his Pacinian corpuscles. He was close enough to feel the heat rising from her skin as she blushed furiously, backing away from him to stand against the wall.

"Thanks. I'd have broken my nose for sure if I'd hit the ground." Her voice belied the unspoken tension that had tightened in the air between them.

He retreated to his previous location, unconsciously flexing his hand. "You are welcome. It would not please me to see you injured in such a way."

She was about to say something when her washer ground to a halt. Instead, she turned and opened the lid, dragging her soaked clothes from within the depths of the water. He heard her whispered curses under her breath but chose to ignore them. He was certain that he, too, would use foul language if he had to fish his clothing out of a partially finished cycle.

She wrung as much water as she could out of each piece of clothing as he watched dispassionately, until she pulled the final piece of clothing out of the water. The red shorts mocked him from her hands, challenging him to discover their inversion secret.

"Penny, you did not answer my question prior to your untimely tumble from the washing machine. Was your disheveled appearance of a sexual nature, or did I misunderstand?"

She looked at him, and then looked away, chewing on her lip. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and closed it again, not speaking. Moving to the freestanding dryers, she tossed her laundry basket on the floor and turned to look at him enigmatically before she opened the door and bent over to put her soaked clothing inside.

Her action drew his eyes to her buttocks since that was the only part of her that he could actually see at that moment.

He tried to think about her in only the most scientific of ways. She was a female that accepted him as different, tolerated his quirks, and attempted to understand his need for control in all things. True, she pushed his buttons when she could, but it had forced him to grow as a person and a man, each little shove opening him to another vista that was his own metamorphosis.

This—this, though…

She shifted again and her shorts rode up on her buttocks, exposing more of her as the seam drifted into the cleft between the cheeks. Sheldon stopped cold at the sight, his hand still in midair where it traced the sign for infinity. His blood surrendered to the biological imperative of his midbrain and migrated to the corpus cavernosum in his groin. He noticed that she was still bent over and turned his back to her, adjusting the erection along his hip, hopefully minimizing its noticeability.

He neglected to factor Penny into the equation, however.

"Sheldon, are you okay?"

It wasn't until she spoke that he realized his head was thrown back and his eyes were closed—and his groin was pressed into his own spinning washer.

He turned around quickly, removing the stimulus of the vibration, but it only made his head spin. He had miscalculated the amount of blood that was missing from his brain, filling his penis instead at that moment. Drat.

He also miscalculated Penny's attention to detail.

"Sheldon. Well. I always suspected that you were an ass man."

He opened his eyes to disabuse her of that notion and found her disturbingly close to him. "Penny," he started weakly, pausing to take a deep, shuddering breath. "My predilection for the female buttocks is a biological imperative, not necessarily my personal preference."

"Oh, but you lie, Dr. Cooper. You are an ass man and that right there," she said, pointing to his obvious and painful erection, "proves it beyond a doubt."

She leaned close to him and tugged on his double shirts to bring his ear closer to her. "You didn't sport a boner after you copped a feel, Sheldon."

The heat of her breath on his neck raised goose bumps across his skin. "I did nothing of the sort, Penny. I was assisting you in preventing an injury, not 'copping a feel', as you erroneously assume. Your momentum threw my efforts off."

"Yeah, momentum is a heartless bitch." He laughed breathily and she smiled up at him. "That doesn't explain this, though."

He stopped breathing when she cupped him through his pants.

He had always thought her hands were large and masculine in appearance, but they seemed almost delicate as she lightly touched him in a place that would have sent him screaming out of the room only a year ago. Her hand was hot; he wondered if she was feverish or if it was just his perception of the moment. She scratched her nails up the fabric of his pants and he jerked, extremely aware and sensitive to everything in the room. It sent a tingle from his glans to his scrotum and he felt his erection leap in his clothing.

This seemed to be her objective because she withdrew her hand and looked at him thoughtfully.

"So. Your question. Yes, my disheveled appearance was because of a situation of a sexual nature, Sheldon. That good enough?"

He tried to concentrate on physics but did not have enough higher brain function to do so. "I don't understand, Penny. You were the only one that left the room."

She looked at him in frustration. "Yes, Sheldon."

"How could you be in a situation of a sexual nature when you were alone?" The answer popped into his head and for once, the genius felt stupid—mainly because he had not seen the solution before posing the question. "I see. You were masturbating. Hence the noises that emitted from behind the door."

She almost looked embarrassed again, except somehow he knew that she wasn't. "Does that answer your question, or are there more?"

Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips. "Yes. No. I—no I do not believe I have any other questions."

He hoped that she would drop it. He knew that she would not.

"So I guess the only question left is how you will be relieving that little problem of yours, Sheldon. Or big problem, I should say."

_I am the master of my own body. I am the master of my own body. I am the master of my own body._

Kohlinar was not helping tonight. Physics wasn't helping. Her scent, her proximity, her obscenely rounded buttocks or her shorts or her skinny tee that ended too far above her waistband to make him comfortable (like he ever noticed what she wore, anyway. Science was his life.)—not one thing he could think of diminished the erection that was now verging on painful hardness. Were he alone, he would have taken matters to hand and performed the most perfunctory of tasks to relieve the situation, but he was not alone and would not be for the near future. Drat and double drat.

"I—I don't know how to answer that." He stared at the floor between his feet.

"Well, I do," she answered.

Despite his aversion to germs and touch and people and everything that he could not directly control, despite his past lectures on personal space and the violation of his, despite everything that had ever passed his lips to fall on her ears, she stepped closer to him than she ever had before, even when he had hugged her on rare occasion.

She reached out her hand (gentle hand, small hand, delicate hand) and touched him.

She pushed his shirts out of the way and unbuttoned his pants, then unzipped them. He wanted to move, he truly did, but her actions had effectively frozen him in his spot, leaning against the now silent washer. Her feet were between his and he kept his eyes trained on the bright red polish on her toenails as she slipped one hand under his shirts, tracing his ribs with her fingernails and scratching his side lightly.

It distracted him from her other hand until she wrapped it around his penis. It didn't fit in her hand; her fingers were not long enough.

He could recall other times he saw her hands and how they moved. Their careful delicacy as she created Penny blossom after Penny blossom during their stint into ecommerce. The strong aggression as she played Halo, punching buttons quickly and in succession to defeat her enemies onscreen. The way that she used her hands to punctuate conversations, blow people up with her mind, poke him when he needed it.

He never imagined that he would need her this way. He looked down at her through his lashes, hoping that she wasn't watching his face. He was chagrined to find that she was.

Then she started to talk and he found he was hanging on to every word that dropped from her lips like a lifeline.

"Do you know what I was thinking of in the bathroom, Sheldon? Your hands. How beautiful your hands were. You are so particular about your hands. You wash them all the time, use Purell constantly, even lotion them before you go to bed. There's a callus from holding a marker, but other than that, they are prettier than mine are. Your fingers are so long they would probably reach—well, never mind what they would reach. I can imagine your hands doing so much to me and even though I know it would never happen, I can fantasize."

She stroked him to the rhythm and cadence of her speech, her fingers tightening slightly on the upstroke. Her palm brushed repeated against the bottom of the glans, stimulating him in a most interesting way. This felt utterly amazing compared to his own perfunctory, clinical experience with masturbation.

She looked up at him with a smile and he realized that he must have said that last part of his mental soliloquy aloud.

"When you masturbate, you know what to expect. Your hand, your brain, your touch. When someone else does it, you lose control—and regain the element of surprise." Her sentence was very matter of fact and almost unaffected—surprisingly so. It only served to make him twitch in her hand.

She added a twist on the upstroke, his shoulders jerked him forward, and his head landed on her shoulder. He could smell her perfume even better than before and that unidentifiable scent leaped into his nostrils. Occam's razor—that undefined, underlying scent that seemed to draw him, mesmerize him, hypnotize him and paralyze him must be Penny herself. Her phrenomones.

He understood the science of sex. He comprehended the wondrous combinations of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves that worked with the hypothalamus and limbic system to create the perfect conditions for mating and procreation. Science never prepared him for this, however.

He closed his eyes and let her scent wash around him and over him. _I am a leaf on the wind_, he thought, as she carried him away.

He felt short of breath. He could hear his harsh, gasping breaths as they stood in the silent laundry room, her hand playing over his most intimate skin and creating the most impossible, improbable sensations that flew through his body at the rate of 0.0002m/s/s.

Time crawled to a halt, dilating and telescoping over itself and in itself until he could think of nothing but the urge to pump his hips and clutch at the source of his pleasure.

He reached up to place his hand on her shoulder as she shifted. His hand landed in her hair, tangling in golden tresses that were softer than silk against his hand. He opened his eyes to see her looking at him, a secretive smile on her face and the imperative grew irresistible.

He stabilized her face with his hold on her hair and sealed his lips over hers, more to muffle his own noises than anything else.

He dragged his mouth away from hers and moved it down to her neck. Inhaling deeply, he let his lips linger at the crook of her neck until she flicked her thumb across the opening of his urethra. It sent such a strong jolt of pleasure to his hindbrain that he bit into the corded muscle that lay taut beneath the skin above her collarbone.

He didn't register how he affected her until her hand tightened almost painfully around him. He worried her skin with her teeth as her stimulation became erratic, and then released it to look into her eyes.

They were almost completely black, her pupils dilated until there was only a hint of green ringing them. Her breathing was as stilted as his, her chest rising and falling with the increase of her respirations. He noticed in an off-hand way that the cleavage of her breasts resembled the roundness of her buttocks and then he short-circuited.

He would reflect later and liken it to Commander Data performing a hard reset.

His mind blanked completely, his body growing stiff and immobile as he began to ejaculate. He was glad that Penny retained her senses when he felt a damp washcloth pressing against the head of his penis, catching his spending as it jettisoned from his body. He felt like he was floating, his head detached from his body, as he existed only in his conscience in the moment.

He felt her tucking him back into his pants, zipping him up. He couldn't raise his head from her shoulder where it had landed when his moment was upon him. He couldn't open his eyes. He could barely stand.

She patted him on the back under his shirts. "Problem solved," she said, withdrawing her hand and bringing him back to the present.

She walked over to the dryer and put in three dimes before starting the load.

He tried to be outraged at her effrontery. He tried to condemn her, at least in his mind, for violating his personal space. He tried—and failed miserably.

She pushed herself up onto the top of the dryer and picked up her magazine, opening it to the article she was reading when he came in the laundry room.

He stared at her. When she ignored him, he cleared his throat. He started to open his mouth and she held up her hand, finished reading the page she was on, and then looked up at him.

He opened his mouth and she shook her head negatively. "It never happened."

"Pardon me? I do believe, Penny, that—"

"What you think happened? Never happened."

"I don't know what you mean, Penny."

She could see the confusion in his eyes. "Sheldon, you don't _do_ sex. I do it too much. If we were to believe that in another dimension somewhere along the timeline I gave you a hand job in the laundry room, I'm almost certain that your head would explode with the incongruousness of it. So, it never happened."

She was giving him an out, a viable explanation for the preceding situation. "So it never happened. Was it a dream?"

She rubbed her neck and he noticed the mark that he had left there. His teeth were perfectly marked into her skin, the purple bruising already starting. "Er, yeah, whatever makes you able to deal, Sheldon. It didn't feel like a dream to me."

"My apologies—"

"No. Sheldon, you can't apologize because nothing happened for you to apologize for."

"I see." He transferred his clothing to his laundry basket and put them into the dryer, shaking out each piece to remove wrinkles.

They finished their laundry in silence, preoccupied with their own thoughts.

Sheldon thought about physics, the new Avengers movie, Comic-con, and Penny.

Penny thought about Sheldon, hand jobs, masturbating, and how hard she was going to fuck herself when she got upstairs. Her purple toy should be about the right size.

Her laundry finished first. She eschewed folding it, just threw it into the basket at her feet and grabbed it up, settling it on her hip.

"Well, I'm done. Good night, Moonpie. Sweet dreams."

"Penny, as you well know from my repetitive chastisement, Meemaw…"

"Yeah, she is the only one that calls you Moonpie. Keep thinking that way, Sheldon. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

He listened to her fading footsteps as she went upstairs without him.

Her scent lingered behind him and made him think of soft hands that could grip like a vise, hair that glistened like spun gold, and the cord of her neck between his teeth.

Inconceivable. He felt his penis growing hard again. Thank—well, he was thankful for his eidetic memory. There would be no difficulty in reliving this fantasy before bed.

Whatever would help him sleep at night.


End file.
